Death Toll Rises to 29 After Historic Flooding in Italy

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People pass on Nov. 4, 2018, by damages on a flooded road near a house where nine people of the same family died after a small river burst its banks in Casteldaccia near Palermo on the southern Italian island of Sicily.(Credit: ALESSANDRO FUCARINI/AFP/Getty Images)

Death Toll Rises to 29 After Historic Flooding in Italy

People pass on Nov. 4, 2018, by damages on a flooded road near a house where nine people of the same family died after a small river burst its banks in Casteldaccia near Palermo on the southern Italian island of Sicily.(Credit: ALESSANDRO FUCARINI/AFP/Getty Images)

With the deaths of 12 people in Sicily, the death toll in Italy’s historic flooding has grown to 29, the country’s interior minister said.

“Twelve dead in Sicily, people that were having dinner and were swept up by the water,” Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said in a statement to the press in the northern region of Veneto.

Nine of the people were members of two families dining together when the house was submerged by water from a nearby river that overflowed suddenly, the Fire Brigade said on Twitter.

The Fire Brigade said on Twitter that its divers had found the bodies. Among the victims were two children, 1 and 3 years old.

The Civil Protection Agency said it’s still looking for a doctor who had been on his way to work at a hospital Saturday night and is now missing.

High winds and heavy rain have devastated parts of the country over the past week, causing the worst flooding in at least a decade in Venice, damages of more than 1 billion euros ($1.14 billion) in Veneto and landslides that have cut off villages, authorities said.

The situation in Sicily is “dramatic,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Sunday.

Conte will call a cabinet meeting to announce a state of emergency in affected regions, he said at a press conference in Palermo, Sicily.

Several of last week’s deaths were caused by falling trees as winds as strong as 190 kilometers per hour (118 mph) toppled acres of woodland, including the famous “Violin Forest” that provided wood for violin maker Antonio Stradivarius’ instruments.

Two young people died south of Rome when a tree hit their car. Another was hit by a falling tree while walking in Naples.

Around 300,000 trees were flattened after winds swept through the Val d’Assa in the Asiago plateau, Roberto Ciambetti, president of the Veneto Regional Council, told CNN.

“Tens of thousands of tall trees were felled like toothpicks,” he said.

Much of Venice was under water as strong winds on Monday drove the high tide to one of the highest levels ever recorded.

St. Mark’s Square became a lake, and floodwater spilled across the ancient marble floors of St. Mark’s Basilica.

“In a single day, the basilica aged 20 years, but perhaps this is an optimistic consideration,” Carlo Alberto Tesserin, head of the board responsible for St. Mark’s Basilica, said in a statement.

Floodwaters also covered several dozen square meters of the 1,000-year-old marble pavement in front of the alter of the Madonna Nicopeia, a 12th-century icon, and submerged the Baptistery and the Zen Chapel, Tesserin said.

Flood barrier project incomplete

This week’s flooding was caused by a seasonal high tide and a strong low-pressure system in southern Europe that brought strong winds from the south and pushed water up the Adriatic Sea into Venice. This is the peak time of the year for seasonal flooding known as acqua alta, or high water, in the city.

Flooding at high tide has become much more common in Venice because of climate change — a problem that will continue to worsen as seas rise because of increasing temperatures and melting ice sheets, according to CNN meteorologists.

Work to install innovative underwater flood barriers to protect Venice from serious flooding, known as the Moses Project, has been underway for years. However, it has not yet been completed, thanks in part to corruption and spiraling costs.

A spokesman for the Civil Protection Agency in Venice told CNN that the Moses system could have mitigated the impact of salt water on the city’s historic sites.

“Of course if the Moses project was completed the damages we are seeing now would not have happened,” he said, “but the project was not completed because of the high cost.”

The spokesman for the mayor’s office called for the project to be completed.

“The Moses project is important to the Venetians,” he said. “This infrastructure must be completed to avoid extraordinary waters, like what happened on Monday.”

A spokeswoman for the New Venice Consortium, which is responsible for the Moses system, told CNN: “The work on the Moses began in 2003. At the moment it is 92-93% concluded.”

Venice also has a system in place to monitor tides and warn of high water levels.